![]() ![]() (Phillip Lopate, “Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character. It means you have achieved sufficient distance to begin to see yourself in the round: a necessary precondition to transcending the ego-or at least writing personal essays that can touch other people.” But rather a potential release from narcissism. I would further maintain that this process of turning oneself into a character is not self-absorbed navel-gazing. The need thus exists to make oneself into a character, whether the essay uses a first- or third-person narrative voice.They are two-dimensional and lack nuance. Flat characters, on the other hand, are more like window dressing. They are written specifically so audiences can pay attention to them for a specific reason. They usually play an important role in the story. A round character is nuanced and well thought-out. The point is to begin to take inventory of yourself so that you can present that self to the reader as a specific, legible character. Characters in a novel, short story, play, or film can be either round or flat.The art of characterization comes down to establishing a pattern of habits and actions for the person you are writing about and introducing variations into the system. Forster, in ‘Aspects of a Novel,’ drew a famous distinction between ‘flat’ and ‘round’ characters-between those fictional personages seen from the outside who acted with the predictable consistency of caricatures, and those whose complexities or teeming inner lives we come to know. Characters in a novel, short story, play, or film can be either round or flat. And I use the word character much the same way the fiction writer does. “, the writer needs to build herself into a character.Narrator as a Character in the Personal Essay ![]()
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